It must rank among the most stunning statements of all time:

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).

Every word seems pregnant with significance and mystery beyond comprehension—for example the unfathomable mysteries of the Trinity coupled with the most generous and loving act imaginable: praying for the forgiveness of those who were carrying out the greatest injustice and most brutal atrocity in all history.

Jesus prayer was uttered by swollen, thirst-parched, and bloodied lips and with powered by air when the production of every breath required painful effort beyond our ability to conceive.

We certainly know what they were doing. It was the worst injustice ever committed and this against the world’s only truly innocent man – a man whose entire life was the definition of unselfishness, love, compassion, kindness, and sacrificial service for those who deserved the opposite.

How could Jesus’ killers not know what they were doing? Were their hearts so hard and consciences so dead that the unnecessary torture they inflicted was somehow justified in their minds? Did no human decency temper their violent assault and cruel mocking? Were they blind and deaf to what everyone in Jerusalem knew regarding Jesus’ miracles of compassion, His teachings of love and peace, and His unblemished character? How could they so easily brush aside the possibility, however remote, that He actually was God’s Messiah and that they might one day grovel before His judgment bar? Was peer pressure and mob rule so strong that they were able to stifle every internal voice that whispered or screamed, “This is wrong! You should not participate!”?

But Jesus asked His Father to forgive them because they did not know what they were doing.

The generosity of His evaluation is staggering. It seems unreasonable, perhaps even insane.

Nevertheless, for those of us who know that at this moment of pain and shame, He was the Lamb of God and the Savior of the world, we must acknowledge that every word He spoke was the embodiment of truth—they did not know what they were doing.

He, the God of creation, the ultimate Judge of living and dead, saw through the ugly evil, and recognized that at some level, His abusers were such prisoners to what their past experiences and present influences imposed on them, that their decisions and actions, however wicked, were shaped, at least in part, by a broken world populated by broken people.

This understanding did not release them from responsibility for their wicked and murderous actions (Acts 2:23) or from their need to repent in order to experience forgiveness (Acts 2:36-39), but it was, perhaps, an explanation for Jesus’ astounding mercy and compassion. He was able to put Himself into their place and to feel the forces that shaped their character and twisted their minds, and therefore He longed for them to experience His Father’s forgiveness. God never takes pleasure when the wicked experience the just consequences of their deeds (Ezekiel 33:11) and wants all people (even Jesus’ crucifiers) to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4) so that they can be part of His eternal kingdom immersed in the Shalom of His love, goodness, and healing.

How foreign this spirit is to us who are pleased when disaster overtakes those who hurt us and lust after our own vindication and for the punishment of their wrongs. How unlike this is to our confidence that we know perfectly the entirely wicked motives of those who inflict pain on us and to our certainty that they knew exactly what they were doing and that it was wrong, wrong, wrong!

The bottom line is that Jesus LOVED them – totally, unconditionally, and relentlessly. The generosity of His appraisal of their actions and His longing for their forgiveness places the power of His example behind the clarity of His command for us to love and pray for our enemies (Matthew 5:44) – perhaps the most unique and distinctive characterization of what it means to be a Christian.

“Dear Father, teach me to love as Jesus loved; to be as generous as He is in my attitudes and actions toward those who do evil and who bring pain to me and those I care about. Work in me Your beautiful balance of justice and mercy. Help me to hate and work against evil and injustice while longing for the salvation of those who perpetuate them. Fill me with compassion rather than vengeance and help me to freely give to others the mercy You have freely lavished on me.”